I hear some version of this in almost every first conversation from many organizations, and I have to say it is usually not an inconsiderate question. Most of the time it comes from people who have a budget to defend and want to spend it where it matters, and that is a fair place to start. The underlying question is, with a limited budget and limited staff time, shouldn’t I spend it on something with a higher return? I would go even a step further, there are times when the question is not asked, but it is still in the air. When in order to not offend people, we do not want to have an honest conversation. But this doesn’t make the question go away, and for all practical purposes, this doesn’t have to be an uncomfortable conversation.
So let us take the question seriously, because it deserves a serious answer.
You can’t count who never came
And the serious answer starts with agreeing. It is true, there are not many blind people, and I am not going to inflate the numbers or pretend that a large blind audience is waiting around the corner, because that would make the argument easier and it would also make it dishonest. If your case for accessibility depends on crowds of blind visitors walking through the door, you do not have that case. Let us say it plainly and move on from there, because everything worth saying comes after it.
But there is a problem inside the words “we don’t have”, and it is worth examining further. You cannot count the people who never came, because nobody ever took that count. A museum, for example, that offers a blind visitor nothing to do once inside will, of course, not have many blind visitors, but then it is not an accurate measurement of the maximum potential.
Now flip the question around. People do not visit places that offer them nothing to do once they are inside, and this is especially true for someone who has to plan every visit in advance, arrange transportation, and decide whether the whole effort is worth it. When it comes to spending a day meaningfully, people will go and look somewhere else.
Small communities talk
And here is the part organizations usually miss. Blind people share accessibility related information, especially edge cases, good or bad. The community is small, which we have already granted, but small communities are networked, and one genuinely good visit travels fast. One museum where the staff knew what to do, where the information was there before the visit and the experience was memorable, gets talked about in chapters and mailing lists and school groups. And, of course, the reverse travels just as fast. The math here is more forgiving than it looks. You do not need a thousand blind visitors to make this worth doing. You need the ten who came to tell the hundred who are still deciding.
The hardest case
There is also what designing for the hardest case does to everything else, and I have to admit this is the part I enjoy most. If a tour works for someone with no vision at all, it works, for example, for everyone standing next to them. That is not a slogan, it is something I have watched happen. And I want to be clear about what it covers, because people tend to assume the visual work is off the table. It is not. Paintings get audio description, and good audio description is a craft of its own. Paintings and objects get tactile equivalents, and those take real skill to make well. The guide who learns to describe for a blind visitor starts describing better for the sighted school group standing next to them, and the whole tour gets better. When you aim at the edge, you usually hit the middle, and that is part of the return on that investment.
Not only tactile
And it is not only tactile, either. Tactile gets most of the attention because it is the most visible part, but making a site work for blind visitors is broader than that.
It is audio description done well.
It is staff who know how to guide, how to describe, and how to offer help.
It is the website that says what is actually available before anyone has to ask, because blind visitors plan ahead and they check.
People differ, of course, and I don’t want to generalize about what every blind visitor needs. But these are the pieces that come up again and again. Touch is one piece of it, and an important one, but it is not the whole job.
The curb-cut effect
Now the curb-cut effect, and I don’t want to play this down, because this is what sells it. When you create something for blind people, and you create it well, it turns out to be useful for so many other people, and often for just about everyone. The audio description made for a blind visitor is the same description that gives a sighted visitor twice the depth. It is also useful for the elderly visitor who would rather listen than read. The tactile map built for hands is the map the overwhelmed first-time visitor actually understands.
Tactile objects deserve a word of their own here. Children love them, which doesn’t surprise anybody. The surprise is the adults. A grown visitor who has spent a lifetime being told not to touch anything in a museum gets an entirely new experience the moment she is allowed, even encouraged, to handle an object. You can watch the hesitation give way.
The staff member who learned to guide and describe well serves every visitor better, not just the blind ones. The website that states plainly what is available helps the school group planning a trip, the older couple deciding whether the walk is manageable, the parent figuring out whether the kids will last the afternoon.
There is a reason for this, and it is not an accident. When you have to make something work without vision, you cannot hide behind “just look at it.” You have to figure out what actually matters about the thing, put it into words, put it into form, and that discipline makes the whole experience clearer for everyone. Designing for the people who need it most is how you find out what good looks like, and then everybody gets the benefit.
So when you ask about the return on that investment, this is a large part of the answer. You are not buying something for a small group. You are buying a better site for nearly everyone who comes through the door, built through the discipline of designing for the people who need it most. The reason is still the blind visitor. But the return reaches much further than that.
An invitation, not just information
Which brings us to the invitation problem, and this one is really about marketing. When people do not know a place is accessible, not going is the safe choice, and that is a risk the organization takes on without ever noticing. Good information is an invitation. This is how I plan my own travel. The museums I end up visiting are not always the ones that interest me most. They are the ones where I could find proof, before I left home, that the visit would be worth the effort. I have wasted too many half days on places that sounded wonderful and had nothing for me once I was inside, and let’s face it, most places still are not accessible. So I look for the overlap: somewhere that shows its accessibility clearly and still matches what I care about. A page that says what is available, in plain words, before the visit, does more work than most organizations think. When a museum puts that proof where I can find it, it does not just inform me, it wins the trip. And the absence of that page is also an answer, just not the one you meant to give.
The work comes first
None of this is theory. I have seen it play out in the work itself, more than once. The organizations that commit to the access work before the audience exists are the ones that end up with the audience. That is the order it happens in, and it does not happen the other way around.
My own story follows the same pattern. I built tactile restroom maps to make navigation easier for blind people. What I did not expect was where most of the feedback came from. On an average site there are more neurodivergent visitors than blind ones, and they gave me much more feedback. They can navigate a restroom by sight perfectly well, so nobody had ever thought to make a restroom map for them to study before they walk in. For them it turns out to be extremely useful, because they can prepare for what is inside, or decide not to go in at all if the place does not have what they are looking for, like a changing table for their kids.
And no, you do not have to do it all at once. That is the cost objection hiding inside the visitor objection, the same budget question from the beginning. But one object is not enough either, let’s be honest about that too. What you need is enough for a real visit, an hour or two of education or entertainment, and that means a few objects, a few stops, a tour with actual substance. A few pointers, then, for where to start. Pick the pieces which align best with the mission of your organization, or what the visitors already ask about. Make those excellent. Then keep going. Start small, but start with enough to matter.
I hope this gives you a few things to think about. Where you start, how far you go, how fast, is worth thinking through for your own organization. If you want to talk it through, get in touch. I’m happy to help.